Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Yes, something is wrong with my camera. Ever since the Halloween party, my pics have turned out very fuzzy. What's wrong? I don't think it's user error, since I took like 20 pictures of the same thing to test. It must be bewitched.....But, regardless of my camera problems, I will go ahead and show you my Halloween meal, beginning with dessert! I made the gingerbread cookies from JOVB, plus this sounded like a good way to get rid of the rest of my cupcake frosting from the weekend. The process was a little finicky, the dough seemed really dry until I added some water. I am also not very skilled at rolling out dough evenly yet. But in the end, the cookies turned out well, crisp but not too crunchy, just the way I like my gingerbread (I cooked them on the short side of the suggested time). I even got to use my seasonal cookie cutters for the first time! First a happy pumpkin with my cute skulls mini-bag from here on etsy....

And a fall leaf... For dinner, I was excited to try my first recipe from ED&BV! Yep, I got it (and Veganomicon, still trying to decide where to start with that one!) a few days ago and now I'm officially overwhelmed with recipes. So I started with something simple that Dreena had also blogged about, the Cashew-Ginger Tofu. Served over quinoa with roasted Halloween colored vegetables (butternut squash, carrot, parsnip). Ooops, forgot to turn the oven down when I put in the tofu, so the sauce got pretty thick and pasty. My bad. But I enjoyed the flavor nonetheless. Oh, except for the parsnips. This was my first time eating them, and something about the roasting really dried them out and I thought they were pretty nasty. John told me not to give up on them though.Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!! Just curious, what did those of you who had trick-or-treaters hand out? We don't have any since we live in a gated townhome, but if we ever move, I need ideas for vegan candy!

12 comments:

Oooh yum. Everything looks good, the blur gives it a cool, moody, fall-like feel! Did you change the settings on your camera by accident? I know my camera has an "edge blur" feature that you can turn on to, well, blur the edges of photos! Maybe it's under 'function'?

Nice job on the cookies! Sometimes I don't have patience for decorated cookies, LOL. The Cashew-Ginger Tofu looks awesome, too. Unfortunately, I can't help you out with the candy thing, as I didn't hand out any (and thankfully didn't get any rocks through my windows, either! LOL)

I have the same question about vegan candies. I mean, there are vegan candies you can buy anyway (dum dums, sour patch kids, sweet tarts, etc...) but they all have tons of chemicals in them and I refuse to buy or hand out such things. If only there was more trust and less evil in the world, I'd make my own candy for all the kids! Ah, well!

mmm, the cashew-ginger tofu from ED&BV looks divine!! Love the addition of the Halloween-colored vegetables :0) I too am still trying to decide what to make from Veganomicon... let me know what you decide to make first!!

No trick-or-treaters for my family either - we live in a private section of town, like you.

Oh, I love your Halloween-themed baked treats! How gorgeous! Gotta try that tofu recipe too. Sorry to hear your camera is on the blitz, mine's just started having trouble focusing too. What would we vegan bloggers do without our digital cameras?

I saw some mini dark chocolate Endangered Species candy bars at my local health food store but we did not buy any (mainly to keep away from me!) plus we live near a university and mostly people are childless in our neighborhood. everything looks lovely. the cookies look especially yummy!

Hi, just mentioning this in case you haven't tried it, because my camera once did the same thing & it was literally a smudge on the lens that I had to wipe off. Because I notice in each shot that it's the same spot where the "soft focus" is going on, while at the edges the focus is perfect.

Just came back to say that we handed out vegan hard candy and my favorite, mary janes to trick-or-treaters. This was the first year we handed out candy, previously, we'd go out to dinner for Halloween to avoid them, but it was really nice!